← Back to the front page

Axel von Fersen, the Tragic Romance of a Count Who Loved a Queen but Couldn’t Save Her

Khalid Elhassan April 16, 2025 16 min

Fersen - Hans Axel von Fersen — Hans Axel von Fersen. Wikimedia

17. An Impending Scandal

Fersen - A young Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette — Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in their youth. Imgur

French history had examples of extramarital affairs with royal women that ended in the torture and execution of their lovers, and the imprisonment of the royal ladies. For Marie Antoinette to refer to von Fersen as her “beloved” on paper, in her own handwriting, was not like a modern innocent “Dear X”. The Queen of France’s attraction to von Fersen was remarked upon. Sweden’s envoy to the court of King Louis XVI noted in 1779 that Marie Antoinette could hardly hide her love for the Swedish count in public, and he worried that a scandal might erupt at any moment. He was relieved when his fellow Swede left for the American Colonies in 1780, where he served as an aide de camp to the Comte de Rochambeau, commander of the French army that fought on the American side.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.